Railways plans Rs 10 lakh-crore high-speed train corridors

The Indian Railways is planning to announce high-speed train corridors construction plan worth Rs 10 lakh-crore. The plan is to connect all major cities in the country, covering almost 10,000 km along the lines of the government’s Bharatmala highways development programme. As reported, the plan will be announced in April and the routes will be connected along with the funding mechanism.

The trains are expected to run at 200 km per hour on the new rail lines that would come elevated atop the existing or upcoming national highways or on rail land that runs parallel to existing rail routes. The Railways will come up with tenders inviting all global majors, to keep the cost of construction minimal. The government reportedly plans to build double lines on single pillars to halve the cost of construction from Rs 200 crore per km to Rs 100 crore per km. Also, light-weight aluminium coaches would be specifically designed for trains to be run on electric traction.

The government is currently constructing a 534-km-long bullet train corridor between Mumbai and Ahmedabad at a cost of over Rs 1 lakh crore. The project is likely to be completed by the end of 2022. Feasibility studies for various other corridors including Delhi-Chandigarh, Delhi-Mumbai, Delhi-Kolkata and Bengaluru-Chennai have already been done.